by Emma Savant
“I’ll bet,” I said. I tried to remember what I’d heard about the last queen. I could come up with nothing but rumors—that she’d died of old age, that she’d disappeared in a mysterious incident in Egypt, that she’d turned into a bubble and floated away on the evening breeze. No one knew. I’d always assumed she’d just died, like anyone else.
“The last queen chose me when I was fifteen,” she said. “That was over twenty years ago now. I’ve only been doing the job on my own since my early twenties.”
“Where’s Queen Phoebe now?” I asked. Queen Phoebe had been the monarch when I was born, but I didn’t remember her. Amani had ascended to the throne when I was four years old.
She shrugged. “I have no idea,” she said. “She checks in sometimes. Last I heard she was climbing mountains in Japan, but she’s in a different country every time I talk to her. She’s always been obsessed with languages and she’s been studying slang in cultures around the world with a team of Humdrum anthropologists.”
That was a side of the old queen I’d never heard of before. I bit the inside of my cheek, torn between a strange sense that none of this was really happening and an uncomfortable awareness that yes, it absolutely was. The reality and unreality of the moment tugged at each other, making the room seem fuzzy one moment and too clear the next.
“Anyway, I’ve been under pressure to choose an heir for a while,” Amani said. Her eyes, staring at me, were almost too green. I felt a weird sense of relief coming off her, like she’d been holding this in for way too long. “It’s customary to choose the heir when the current queen is still young. Phoebe didn’t really go with the program on that—Phoebe didn’t really go with the program on anything, which is why I love her—but the Council’s been reminding me in no uncertain terms that I should not follow in her footsteps there. They don’t like loose ends,” she added, which matched perfectly with what I knew of my dad. “They want the security of knowing another queen is in the wings in case something happens to me.”
She sat forward, picked a strawberry off the cheesecake, and then, after a moment of contemplation, set it back down on her plate. “The truth is they’d be fine if something did,” she said. “Our community is full of resourceful, brilliant people. They’d get by perfectly well without me. But you try telling a room full of Glimmers that.” She rolled her eyes. “The one time I tried I almost gave the Minister of Magicians a heart attack, and the High Witch gasped so hard she swallowed a cream puff whole.”
“But we can’t survive without a queen,” I said. “The Faerie Queen gives our community its power. You protect us. You make the trees grow.”
She sighed, a long, tired whisper that matched the emotions coming from her. “That’s how the stories go,” she said. “You want to know the truth?”
I nodded, though privately I thought I’d already heard about as much truth as I could deal with for one day.
“The truth is, the Glimmering community gives me my power, not the other way around. They help me protect them. We all make the trees grow. I’m just a figurehead. A symbol.”
“Symbols have power,” I said. This was one of the first lessons of magic. I’d heard it from my cradle.
“They do,” she said. “But only the power people give them, do you understand?”
I shook my head, sending a loose strand of hair onto my forehead. I brushed it back. “You’re the Faerie Queen,” I said, as though she didn’t already know this. “You lead us.”
“I can only lead those who are willing to be led,” she said. “You’ll understand that someday if you decide to take me up on this offer.” She opened her mouth, closed it again, and then said, “But anyway, the Council has been pressuring me to make a choice.”
“So you landed on me, because I’m Reginald’s daughter,” I finished.
Amani looked startled, then shook her head quickly and laughed. I got a fleeting impression that the idea made her nervous. “Titania, no,” she said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but your being Reginald’s daughter almost made me second-guess myself.”
Finally, something she said made sense.
“I landed on you because you because when I saw you, I recognized you. Do you know much about divination?”
“No,” I said. My grandma and great-grandma had been good at it a long time ago, or so my mom claimed, but I’d never learned. “I don’t know a lot of magic, to be honest,” I added. “I’ve never been all that interested.”
She laughed, though I didn’t see what was funny. I would have expected her to be horrified that her intended heir had no interest in the field of magic, let alone the one job that required it twenty-four/seven.
“Maybe that’s why you’re the one. Maybe we’re headed for a big cultural shift,” she said. “I’m good at divination. I’m good at a lot of things, but I’ve always been good at that. I’ve been scrying in the pool a lot lately.” She waved toward the window, which I took to mean one of the two pools Multnomah Falls plunged into. “I’ve been seeing you for months. I look into the water and the pictures change, but you’re the one constant in all of them. And then I saw you at your brother’s performance and I just couldn’t stop staring.”
“I noticed,” I said.
“I can’t even explain how exciting it was to actually see you across a room,” she said. “I try to have faith in my abilities, because without trust in the process there’s really no point to working magic, but I was starting to wonder if you were just wishful thinking. It’s impossible with divination to tell what’s real and what’s just me projecting things, and of course every tiny choice we make changes the picture a little. I could change the picture tomorrow by naming someone else. Trust me, there are plenty of people lining up for the job. Like I said, I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately. I was almost ready to just pick someone so the Council would get off my back and let me go focus on the magic I actually need to be focusing on.”
Her voice spiked on the last few words. “And what’s that?” I said.
Her eyes glinted. “Magic that keeps us safe,” she said. “I meant it when I said everyone could survive without me, if that was their choice. But it’s not their choice yet. They still think they need me. Their belief means I’m the only one who can deal with certain problems that face our community. Our world has enemies who try to cause trouble now and then, and I spend a lot of my time and energy keeping them in line. Our world exists in a fine balance, with hundreds of different magical forces in play. I try to sustain that balance while pushing us toward a better future.”
This, at last, sounded interesting. Not like something I wanted to do, of course, but like something I wouldn’t mind hearing more about. But prying into the Faerie Queen’s enemies probably wasn’t the wisest course of action right now. She might mistake it for enthusiasm for the job.
“Sounds exhausting,” I said.
Again, she smiled, though I couldn’t see why anything I’d said would make her smile. “It is,” she said. “Unbelievably. It’ll drive you crazy and break your heart all in the same day. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
There was another old legend about the Faerie Queen, that she’d gone mad with all the power of her position. Maybe I should consider believing it.
“I know that sounds nuts,” she said. She read me before I’d thought anything out fully. It was like being around Imogen but worse. “It’s great, though. There’s nothing quite like pushing yourself to your limits and then realizing you’re still standing. I do that every day.”
She watched me for a long, quiet moment. I didn’t know what to say. Nothing she’d said made me think I wanted her job. It sounded like a lot of work, and a lot of politics, and a lot of stress—and in the end, she didn’t even think we really needed her. What was the point of that?
“What if I say no?” I said.
“Then you say no,” she said. Her voice stayed calm, as if, despite her excitement at finding me, it didn’t matter to her whether I went along wi
th this crazy scheme or not. “I keep looking for someone else I think can handle it. The offer stays open until then. Either you change your mind, or I find someone else and start to train them.”
“And will you?” I said.
“Not yet,” she said. “I hope you’ll change your mind. Like I told you before, I only hold this role because our people believe in me. I think you’re strong enough to encourage that same kind of belief.”
“You make us sound like Santa Claus,” I said.
Us. It didn’t feel right coming out of my mouth.
She laughed again, a surprised sound that made my stomach flip over.
“I’d never thought of it that way,” she said. “I guess we are. We Glims aren’t that different from the Humdrums, you know? We need people to believe in us before we can really become anything.” She shrugged. “It’s best if you can believe in yourself, of course, but it’s much easier when you have a group of people to carry you through. And so much of my magic comes from them. They send me their energy every day just by thinking I’m important. And I guess I don’t want to let them down, so I become important.” She let her head drop onto the back of the couch. “That will make a lot more sense when you’ve been doing this a while. If you do this for a while,” she corrected, looking over at me.
I looked down at my plate of untouched food, then at the window. The sun had set, and hundreds of gallons of water rushed by in darkness behind the reflection of our room’s lamps. “I don’t think I want to,” I said.
I took a deep breath. I was talking to the Faerie Queen, I reminded myself, and she was talking to me like an equal. I didn’t need to act like a nervous kid who did whatever she was told. I wasn’t that kid. I didn’t want to be.
“I have plans for my life,” I said. My voice came out clear and loud, perhaps for the first time since I’d set foot in the palace. “I want to go to college and study plants. I’m already too much in the public eye because of my dad’s job, and I don’t like it. The only reason I’m working as a godmother right now is so I can save up enough money to get myself into the normal world and build a life of my own. Being your heir is an honor—it really is—but it’s not for me.”
Amani watched me, listening closely and keeping her eyes trained on my face. When I was done, she nodded once, just barely.
“Okay,” she said, and she sounded like she meant it. “I’m not going to pretend I’m not disappointed, but I’m glad you know what you want. Thanks for being honest with me.”
“You too,” I said. “I really am grateful for the chance, it’s just—”
“Not right,” she finished. “Not what you want.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I can respect that,” she said. She let out a deep sigh. “Well, at least we survived this. Trying to tell someone they’re in line for the throne is terrifying.”
“No kidding,” I said dryly. Whatever she’d been going through was nothing compared to the experience from this side. Again, she read me and laughed.
“Hey, listen,” she said, as if she was trying to be casual but couldn’t quite manage it. “Did you tell your parents you were coming here?”
“No,” I said.
To my surprise, she said, “Good. Do you mind if we maybe don’t tell them? Nothing against your dad, but I really don’t want to have to fend him off at every Council meeting.”
Finally, it was my turn to laugh. Dad had always talked about his seasonal Council meetings with the Faerie Queen as though they were respected colleagues engaged in a worshipful mutual-appreciation society. Instead, I realized, she read his personality about like I did.
“That would be fantastic,” I said. “I’m already having to fight to not end up at his school in Austria. Trying to explain to him that I turned down the job of Faerie Queen…” I shuddered. I couldn’t even begin to think about it.
“And Olivia?” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Just remember one thing: The door is open until it’s closed.”
“It’s not going to close because of me,” I said.
She needed to understand that. I wasn’t going to be the Faerie Queen, and I didn’t want to leave her with some half-formed hope that it was going to happen. I was going to be a nice boring botanist living out a nice boring life, far away from the world of faeries and magicians and white moths that guided the way through hidden castles. Anything else was one wish I couldn’t grant.
“Okay,” she said. “If that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want.”
Chapter 15
I woke up the next morning with a splitting headache. The Waterfall Palace had been full of even more magical energy than I had realized, and my body was feeling the effects.
I had spent yesterday evening at the Waterfall Palace.
I groaned and fell back into exhausting dreams for another five minutes before my alarm went off again.
By the time study hall rolled around my migraine had only gotten worse, and I realized I should have stayed home in bed. But it was already too late.
“How’d it go?” Imogen whispered. I had three texts from her from last night and this morning asking the same thing. I hadn’t responded to any of them. How was I supposed to explain what last night had been like? There was no way Imogen would understand. I knew without even asking that she would have taken the offer on the spot.
I nudged my chin toward the front of the room, where Mr. Duncan was grading papers. Imogen sighed, and I tried to go back to focusing on my math homework. But a second later, Imogen’s handwriting appeared in pink on the scratch paper I was scribbling numbers on. What happened?
I bit the inside of my lip and chewed on it. Finally, I wrote, She wanted to talk about work. It was close enough to true. I had mentioned my job, and we’d talked a lot about what she wanted my job to be. The words faded from my paper to somewhere on Imogen’s. Half a math problem later, my scratch paper was again littered with her loopy handwriting.
What did she say? Are you going to be famous now?
I couldn’t even begin to explain. No, I wrote back. She was just curious. We talked about my dad’s work, too. I think she’s just trying to keep her finger on the pulse of the Glim community.
She’s the freaking Faerie Queen, Imogen wrote back. She doesn’t need to have dinner with you to figure out how everything’s going. There must have been more to it than that.
Maybe, I wrote. Sorry. I need to finish these problems. This is due next period.
Sure, she replied. Full details later! She added a smiley face. I closed my eyes and tried to calm the throbbing in my head.
When the bell rang, I shoved my papers together and stood, hoping to make it to the door before Imogen was done. But she was right beside me. She was all legs and I had to take two steps for every one of hers just to seem like I was in a hurry.
“So what did she say?” she asked, voice and eyes both more eager than I wanted.
I caught a glimpse of trees through a classroom window. They were in full bloom, loaded with pink flowers. I would have traded anything to be up in their branches, looking down at people walking below who didn’t even know I was there. But of course, Imogen would find me no matter where I was. We always knew how to find each other.
“I don’t really remember,” I said. “I was super nervous. We just talked for a while and she told me a little bit about her job as queen and the Council meetings she goes to, and that was it.”
I felt sick lying to Imogen. I never lied to her. But I couldn’t find words for the truth. My head pounded every time I tried to think that hard.
“I need details!” Imogen said. I could feel excitement pulsing from her, the same desire she felt to hang out with the Glimmering elite multiplied by ten.
I couldn’t handle her excitement right now. “I have to find Elle,” I said. “We can talk about it later, okay?”
She stopped, surprised, and I ducked between a pair of guys in band T-shirts and headed
down the hall, but not quickly enough to miss the wave of hurt that rolled off her.
The longest fight Imogen and I had ever had was when we were fifteen, and it had lasted almost twenty-seven hours. This had been nothing, but it was still close enough to fighting to make me nervous with shared pain. I pulled my phone out of my pocket as I walked down the hall in search of Elle.
Sorry, I texted. I need to go deal with Elle and then I’m headed home. Had a killer migraine all day from all the magic at the palace. I’ll tell you about it later. Promise.
The missing clarification of how much later glared at me from the pale gray screen, but this had to be good enough for now.
I’m going to talk to Elle about her mom this weekend, I added, wanting to make up for my omission with an extra shot of truth. DON’T TELL LORINDA.
Chapter 16
Guilt made people do stupid things. I couldn’t believe just how stupid until I was actually standing inside Gilt with Imogen on one side and Elle on the other. Imogen kept sending me wide-eyed looks, every one of them asking Are you out of your freaking mind?
Maybe I was. This would probably cost me my job. But I didn’t care. I didn’t care so much I hadn’t bothered to pull the hood of my jacket up over my head, even though it had started to rain. It was a pretty lame attempt at badassery, but I didn’t care about that either.
Trying to juggle everything wasn’t working, and hadn’t been from the beginning. Maybe being told I could be the next Faerie Queen had given me an extra shot of confidence, or maybe I was just so bad at the godmothering thing that I’d hit the far edge of desperation.
Whatever it was, I’d decided: If I was going to be a faerie godmother, I was going to do it my way, and that meant letting Elle know exactly who I was to her.